


I cannot see what flowers are at my feet

by orphan_account



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: M/M, festivebastion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 06:10:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2762576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had flown once, and now he was watering tulips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I cannot see what flowers are at my feet

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Volstovic Cycle Gift Exchange 2014, as a gift for [Ellie](http://edgewcrth.tumblr.com/) for the prompt "rook/thom flowershop au any rating".

It’s winter when they return to Thremedon after their desert camping trip, yellowing snow underfoot and grey dawns every morning. The money had run out, en route to Ekklesia, ‘decorated war hero’ not being quite such a lucrative profession as one might imagine. And then Thom, the bell-cracked bastion damned piece of shit, fucked them three ways over.

It takes a special kind of madman to buy a flowershop in the middle of the Volstovic winter.

He was _supposed_ to have been getting something for dinner that night, but he returned to their room in Molly with a contract and spewing crap about how he’d taken a few classes in botany while he was studying at the ‘versity, well really it was only to help with his understanding of the Arlemagne region, until Rook wanted to knock his teeth out. He didn’t ask where he’d found the money.

The silver lining was that there was an apartment above it, so they’d been able to move in there and out of Molly, though sometimes Rook questioned if this was a good thing. He’d always felt at home in Molly in the worst possible way, and he’d lived in Miranda, but Charlotte was new to him. Charlotte set his teeth on edge. It was the ugly facades, square and plain, pretending at a grandeur they barely had any more claim to than he did, for fuck’s sake.

Thom took care of it, prattling on about suppliers and greenhouses and frost and roses from Arlemagne and gift-wrap and some stupid ancient Ramanthine cindy who got hit in the head and spouted flowers from the blood. Rook wanted to scream. The lady he’d bought it of had been old and practically blind, and Thom wanted to clean the place up. The paint fumes made Rook’s head ache and his dreams even weirder than they usually were. Also, he was a terrible painter. He took a lackadaisical approach to layering and couldn’t get the hang of drips. But Thom insisted.

“What do you want to call it?” Thom had asked on day, while Rook tried to crawl out of his own skin. “We can’t keep calling it _Ruth’s Flowers_. It has to be called something.”

“Call it _The Fucking Hyacinth_ for all I give a shit.”

Thom looked thoughtful, which never boded well.

“No,” he said slowly. “But we could call it _The Heroic Hyacinth_ , or...” He carried on at some length, despite the fact that clearly he was rambling to himself, and it was all useless anyway because in the end the sign out the front read _The Heroic Hyacinth_. Fucking stupid name. Fucking stupid shop.

*  
He settled into a routine easier than he’d care to admit.

Wake up from some dream about metal and burning and wind on his face. Argue with Thom about the heat of the shower or the breakfast bread or bastion knows what. Get dressed. Look after the plants. Open the shop. Try not to swear too much at little old ladies because that tends to put them off buying anything. Lunch. Deal with suppliers. Argue with Thom. Look after the plants. Try not to look too menacing, it scares people away. Close the shop. Dinner. Argue with Thom about the dishes. Sleep.

Sometimes they even combined arguing and working in the shop.

*

“I’d heard _rumours_ of your return!” Trilled an annoying as shit voice.

Here he was, in a gust of expensive cologne and aubergine . Yesfir’s man, in the flesh.

“You can go fuck right off.”

“Now, is that any way to treat an old friend?” Luvander said, magnanimously, bustling about like he fucking owned the place. Rook fought the urge to slap him. He picked up a rose, sniffed it, tilted his head to one side as if to indicate it was neither good nor bad, and set it back into its place.

“Don’t you have a shop to be working in? A job? Something fucking else to be doing with your time?”

“How’s that brother of yours?” Luvander asked, ignoring Rook, holding up a lurid orange and yellow flower up to his sleeve to see if the colours worked.

“None of your damn business. That looks horrible together.”

“Oh my, he’s really rubbing off on you, isn’t he?”

“The door’s open, Luvander.”

“But no, you’re right,” Luvander lamented, strolling up to the counter and leaning against it. “It clashes like hell. Anyway,” he continued, “I’m here on something of a mission. You’re invited to dinner, you and me and Balfour, with our dear old sergeant.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his coat and placed it down between them. “The address is on here. 7:30 Wednesday. Be there.”

“I’m not fucking going.”

“Oh, you will. Or Adamo will be around. Or worse, Balfour. He’s a tenacious little bastard. He’ll stare at you mournfully and never say anything worth a damn. You’ll want to throttle him worse than you want to throttle me now. It’s hell, trust me. Adieu!”

And he was gone with a tinkle of the door and a puff of frozen air. Rook shook his head and went to pay attention to a neglected-looking gerbera. He sighed.

They had flown once, and now he was watering tulips.

*

They have a fight over the cutlery that night. _Cutlery_. Pieces of metal bend into shapes. Eating utensils. Everything’s a battleground these days. He remembers too well the days when there was a single war, with everything neatly cordoned off into blue or red. The rest was negligible.

Thom thinks Rook holds his fork too heavily and it’s made so poorly that it might bend and break and they don’t really have much spare cash at the moment. Rook thinks Thom’s trying to make a tempest in a thimble-sized teacup. Actually, what Rook thinks is that Thom’s trying to wind him up, push him just far enough over incessant trivial crap day after day, provoke and nettle him into a repeat of that night at the ball, with him shoving Thom into the railings and no point pretending they didn’t both enjoy it. Maybe Rook wouldn’t mind a repeat either. But what he really wants is to yell back at him. So that’s what he does. This is what they do. Such is their current predicament.

*

There’s a problem with some supply route or other. The lilies from Jikji are late. They argue over that, too.

*

Dinner is awkward. Balfour stammers and picks at his gloves. Adamo doesn’t say more than fifty words the whole evening. Luvander talks enough for the four of them. They can all feel the ghosts around the table.

He’s leaving at the end, thanking every deity he’s ever heard of that it’s finally over, when Adamo says, “next week, then?”

Fuck.

*

He went home and dreamt of metal screeching on metal and wakes with the smell of burning in his nostrils. (Though who knows; that could just be Thom with the toast.)

*

“Well, if it isn’t the Mary Margrave,” Rook leered, leaning heavily over the counter.

“Good afternoon, Airman,” replied the Mary Margrave courteously, examining a bouquet of tulips.

“Nice, aren’t they? They’re from Arabella, or somewhere.”

“Fascinating.” The Margrave put the flowers down. “In any case, the tulips are quite beside the point; I’m really here for a centrepiece.”

Which was clearly a lie, because what he was really there for was a good poke about. And he had just the nose for it, giant conker that it was. Rook watched him, dark eyes masterfully flickering over the shop in the manner of one who was memorising it all for a thorough account later. Probably over coffee and pastries with little fruit sugary bits in them.

“Could you possibly recommend me one?” Royston prompted. “I’m having a dinner party.”

“Maybe,” said Rook, hoping he got the right amount of bored and dejected into it, and making no effort to move.

“Are you always this unhelpful to customers? How are you still in business?”

“Ask Thom, I just work here.”

“Hmm. Well in that case, to start with, I’d like some alstroemeria in it...” Rook zoned out. It was infuriating, being ordered about by this man. He kept thinking of their meeting after his stay in Ke-Han captivity. “...And Hal will be around to pick it up Thursday. You know Hal. Hal, saviour of all of Volstov. That Hal.”

“I was there for some of it.”

“Good day, then.”

*

It was one of Thom’s unbearable little quirks (and weren’t there just millions to choose from). First of all that he read the paper, and second of all that he did the crossword every day like clockwork. He read out every damn clue, even if he knew the answer. He hummed under his breath. He sucked the end of the pencil. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was maddening. Rook looked to him, legs dangling off the edge of his bed, mismatched socks, like he wasn’t a grown man. Lazing in the little early morning light that got through the grimy window.

Thom smiled at him, slow and knowing, and Rook knew it’s one of those times when Thom already knew the answer, the little shit.

“Would have thought you’d know this one, what with you naming the shop and all.” The terrible thing is, Rook realises, that he does know the answer. He would rather eat live wasps than admit it.

So he kisses him instead, pushing him down hard into the mattress, seven a.m. stubble meeting seven a.m. stubble, an indignant squeak muffled against his mouth. He must have bitten Thom, or his own lip (or maybe it was the other way round) because there’s blood in his mouth, but he ignores it, because Thom’s kissing back. Took him long enough.

There’ll be hell to pay later, when they stop, but for now the morning light continues to stream over them, higher and higher as the day begins in earnest, as if being cruelly moved ever onwards by a nebulous sun deity.

*

He has dinner again with what remains of the Dragon Corps. It’s fish. It’s good. Better than last time, at least. Balfour takes off his gloves. Thom comes along.

*

They find a routine. Wake up. Argue, sleepily, more out of habit than anything else. Breakfast. Shower. Tend to the flowers. Argue with suppliers. Argue with customers. Wash down the counter where some numbskull splashed it with sticky liquid they put in the water to make the plants last longer. Close for lunch. Count the till. Quibble over a half a tournois of discrepancy. Find it at the bottom of a pocket later. Play nice with all the margraves and wildgraves and lords and ladies. Meet Ghislain for drinks, when he’s in town. Break even, one day in late spring. Watch the sun streaming in through the window. Don’t think too hard about whatever this thing they’re doing is.

He feels different, like he’s lighter, like he’s cautiously flying again. He thinks that maybe it’s something resembling happiness.


End file.
